A health care worker just back from West Africa is being isolated and checked for Ebola virus at New York’s Bellevue Hospital, city health officials said Thursday. It's a by-the-book operation demonstrating the nation's heightened new state of readiness for Ebola, and by far the most high profile yet.

There have been dozens of such scares in recent weeks, ever since Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan was diagnosed with Ebola at a Dallas hospital earlier this month after mistakenly having been sent home. None of the cases have turned out to be Ebola.

But this one’s a little different — the patient was working with Doctors Without Borders in one of the countries affected by Ebola, and the symptoms include fever and stomach upset.

He'd been watching himself for fever.

"While at this stage there is no confirmation that the individual has contracted Ebola, Doctors Without Borders, in the interest of public safety and in accordance with its protocols, immediately notified the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, which is directly managing the individual’s care," Doctors Without Borders said in a statement.

Health care workers are among those at highest risk of being infected, because they work so closely with very ill patients and are in frequent contact with infectious bodily fluids such as vomit.

“The patient was transported by a specially trained HAZ TAC unit wearing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE),” the city health department said in a statement, adding that after consultation with the hospital and the CDC, they would test for Ebola. They are also checking him for malaria, salmonella and stomach viruses because they can all cause similar symptoms.

Because of recent worries about Ebola, the health department added this calming statement: “The chances of the average New Yorker contracting Ebola are extremely slim. Ebola is spread by directly touching the bodily fluids of an infected person. You cannot be infected simply by being near someone who has Ebola.”

The last two U.S. Ebola patients, nurses Amber Vinson and Nina Pham, are recovering in special biocontainment units — Pham at the National Institutes of Health and Vinson at Emory University Hospital.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stepped up its Ebola preparations, offering to sent strike teams to help any hospital with a confirmed Ebola case. The CDC is also advising states to mandate 21-day monitoring for anyone coming back from an Ebola-affected country, and Customs and Border patrol has stepped up questioning at airports. People flying in from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea have been told to use one of five major airports equipped to process them.

This news bureau contains copyrighted material the use
of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We
are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of
environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and
social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of
any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US
Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on
this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes.

We have already discussed in the first part of this analysis how the American geography dooms whoever controls the territory to being a global power, but there are a number of other outcomes that shape what that power will be like. The first and most critical is the impact of that geography on the American mindset.

This e-mail outlines and confirms the acts of espionage against Indonesia and Indonesians by Akiko Makino and the others involved both in Kobe University and in AI Lab at University of Airlangga, Surabaya; Bahasa Indonesia original follows English translation...

The 5th Estate has just purchased a library on H5N1 "Novel" virus pandemics, there are dozens of PDF and Exel documents we feel will assist you in saving lives following intentional releases of the H5N1 and now MERS viruses; we will begin by printing those that appear to be extremely relevant here: H5N1 Kobe-Kawaoka-Ernala series continues soon with more "Smoking Gun" e-mails from Teridah Ernala to The 5th Estate . . .